Shedul raises $6 million for hair salon booking

Beauty parlors manage a lot of appointments, but about half of them are still using pen and paper, estimates Shedul.

The startup is trying to change that, by offering scheduling software for the the salon and spa industry. And it’s been catching on because it’s free.

Now they’re raising $6 million, led by Dubai’s Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), with participation from BECO Capital and Lumia Capital.

They plan to use the funding to add more merchants to their platform and build out a two-sided marketplace. They also will be introducing some paid offerings to complement their booking technology.

With offices in Dubai and Warsaw, Shedul has an international presence, with 40,000 merchants in more than 120 countries. They say they’re bringing in $1.5 billion in annual GMV.

“Growth is almost 100 percent organic, pure word of mouth,” CEO William Zeqiri told TechCrunch. He says they spent just $5,000 on Google ads.

They aren’t just looking for salons still using pen and paper, they are also targeting customers of Mindbody, Booker and StyleSeat. The “customer experience has been very bad” on Mindbody, Zeqiri claimed.

Chris Rogers, partner at Lumia Capital, said they invested because Shedul “has made best-in-class software accessible to the massive beauty industry, which still largely operates offline. We are extremely impressed with the company’s growth trajectory and are delighted to invest in the team.”

Walid Mansour, managing partner at MEVP, said “the growth they achieved in two years is remarkable.”